Adirondack case guy
Well-known Member
We started tapping about 10:00 this morning. At 4:45 whe had hung 800 more buckets.
The temps never dropped below freezing last night and the snow is settling. Yesterday the snow was crotch high, today knee high. Still on snowshoes.
We're blessed with several generations of family, plus some really great friends who love the sugaring season as much as we do.
My uncle and I are the old timers. He drives the tractor, and today the kids decided that I should stay on the trailer and pull buckets, and slid a cover in them and toss them out to the guys hanging them. That was good with me, as yesterday, I showed them that I had a little something left in me after trecking through the deep snow all afternoon hanging buckets, but I was whiooped last night.
This year we have two gas powered tappers which save a lot of steps on snow shoes. As I said last night the roads were cut parallel years back and are about 150 feet apart. Now the guys don't zigzag from road to 75' in. The two tapping crews walk parallel to the road and we toss buckets and covers back to the extremities.
Back when my dad was alive, he drilled the holes in the trees another person followed him and inserted a pill, (now not allowed) and drove the spile in the hole. Then the third person caried a stack of buckets on his sholder and hung a bucket on each spile, and then followed by another person carring covers to attach to the buckets. Quite the line of individuals folowing my dads snowshoe tracks, and it never failed that the bucket guy and cover guy would run out way away from the bobsleigh carring the supplies.
The pics were all taken this afternoon. First of the sap house, then the guys working in the woods, My cousin Kevin in the next to last. pic went down to his belley' a crevis in the limestone floor of the bush, but by the time I got my camera focased he was nearly back on his feet. The parallel roads are a little over 1/2 mile long and the bush covers 60A.
The last pic is of the crew taking a well deserver break after tapping two roads.
We don't tap all of the bush, any more since my dad lost his health 15 years back, but we are carring on both my Grandad's and Farher's legisy.
Loren the Acg.
Untitled URL Link
The temps never dropped below freezing last night and the snow is settling. Yesterday the snow was crotch high, today knee high. Still on snowshoes.
We're blessed with several generations of family, plus some really great friends who love the sugaring season as much as we do.
My uncle and I are the old timers. He drives the tractor, and today the kids decided that I should stay on the trailer and pull buckets, and slid a cover in them and toss them out to the guys hanging them. That was good with me, as yesterday, I showed them that I had a little something left in me after trecking through the deep snow all afternoon hanging buckets, but I was whiooped last night.
This year we have two gas powered tappers which save a lot of steps on snow shoes. As I said last night the roads were cut parallel years back and are about 150 feet apart. Now the guys don't zigzag from road to 75' in. The two tapping crews walk parallel to the road and we toss buckets and covers back to the extremities.
Back when my dad was alive, he drilled the holes in the trees another person followed him and inserted a pill, (now not allowed) and drove the spile in the hole. Then the third person caried a stack of buckets on his sholder and hung a bucket on each spile, and then followed by another person carring covers to attach to the buckets. Quite the line of individuals folowing my dads snowshoe tracks, and it never failed that the bucket guy and cover guy would run out way away from the bobsleigh carring the supplies.
The pics were all taken this afternoon. First of the sap house, then the guys working in the woods, My cousin Kevin in the next to last. pic went down to his belley' a crevis in the limestone floor of the bush, but by the time I got my camera focased he was nearly back on his feet. The parallel roads are a little over 1/2 mile long and the bush covers 60A.
The last pic is of the crew taking a well deserver break after tapping two roads.
We don't tap all of the bush, any more since my dad lost his health 15 years back, but we are carring on both my Grandad's and Farher's legisy.
Loren the Acg.
Untitled URL Link